>> announcer: and, now, from washington's leading news station, this is news4 at 11. tonight a major break in the case six years after a young mother disappeared from home.

>> a plan to keep metro open late during the playoffses. we'll tell you who is going to pay for it. she scored a ren wau for 7 bucks at a flea market, but a local woman may not be able to cash in. why the fbi is now involved. first, we've got heavy weather out there right now, some of us are seeing flashes of lightning. >> the heavy rain is also prompting a flash flood warning in parts of the region. who's getting hit and for how long? storm team 4 chief meteorologist doug kammerer is here to break it down. >> we've seen she strong storms out there during the evening hours. a ton, a ton of lightning with the storms. we've seen winds upwards of 40, s an hour. the best news here is the strongest storms are starting to calm down. we're not out of the woods yet. the rain, in and around the district, everybody is seeing rain, light to moderate, even heavy rain at times. back through the west, loudoun county stronger storms, down to the south thshgs is where the strongest storms are right now

in and around culpeper county, also a flash flood warning in effect for culpeper county until 1:00.m. some areas have seen four to five inches of rain and we're not quite done yet. there's more back to the west. we'll show you when this moves through and what to expect for your friday and your weekend, coming up. there are new clues in a young mother's bizarre disappearance. she vanished from home six years ago, but now her body has been found in a wooded area in stafford county, virgia. we spoke to the victim's family. they're still looking for answer as. >> reporter: tonight that family is absolutely heartbroken. katherine client briant's excel tan remains were found near this area last month. ester bryant breaks down in tears as she's consoled by her two nieces. she's agonizing over the mysterious disappearance of her sister, katherine bryant. >> my heart aches. i feel like a piece of my life

is gone. and it can never be replaced. >> reporter: tonight stafford county sheriff's detectives tell us katherine's skeletal remains have been identified. the 33-year-old was a mother of three girls. her family reported her missing six years ago in the summer, after she was last seen in d.c. >> i just wish i had the chance to talk to her. >> i feel numb like a big part of me is just gone. enough she was missing, you know, since 2006. >> reporter: detectives tell me a trucker spotted a skull and other remains in this wooded area near the northbound 140 ramp off of i-95 in stafford. he called 911. dna linked the remains to katherine. police believe foul play is involved. >> for the outcome to be this is like a dream that i can't wake up from. >> reporter: the stafford county sheriff's office continues to investigate. tonight i talked to a detective and he tells me that they're trying to figure out who katherine bryant's friends were

in 2006. meanwhile, her family waits for answers. in stafford, virginia, news4. there's breaking news tonight involving a workplace shooting in minneapolis. several dead after police say a man opened fire inside an office building. police will not say how many were killed but they have confirmed that the shooter killed himself. at least four people have been rushed to the hospital in critical condition. no word yet on what started it all. a nationwide man hunt is focusing on virginia after the main suspect of a murder in new york is thought to have come this way. 42-year-old anthony tag lee nettie of wood bridge, virginia, is wanted in the death of a school superintendent outside of buffalo. investigators say he drove to new york last week to kill him. police say the two knew each other but wouldn't elaborate on motive. tag lee nettie is now expected to be back in this area, and he is considered armed and

dangerous. tonight, a texas man admits he tried to extort money from redskins quarterback robert griffin iii. authorities say richard herd contacted one of griffin's agents in june demanding $1 million. they said he threatened to release information to the media that he claimed would damage griffin's reputation. he pleaded guilty to extortion charges and faces up to five years in prison and will be sentenced in november. d.c. police are defending their handling of a case that left a man badly beaten on capitol hill near the eastern market. his name is thomas macklin. back in august he was attacked and he still is in the hospital and can't speak. news4 has learned police arrested three night the night of the attack in a robbery and those men had macklin's cell phone but it sat in evidence. those men were not arrested and charged in the beating until last night. today we caught up with his wife. >> i want people to know that they have a social

responsibility in these situations. if they see something, i don't care if they're not sure what the situation is. it is so much better to say something and to be sure that you have told the people, the appropriate people. >> police emphasize they did try to track macklin's phone but she say the battery was dead and six card was removed. >> president obama and mitt romney are campaigning hard with only 40 days to go now before election day. they both held rallies just a few hundred miles apart in virginia today. romney appeared at a veterans of foreign wars post in springfield and criticized cuts in military spending. he spoke to news4's julie carrie about what he would do to cut costs. >> slowly through attrition we'll reduce government appliment by 10%. that, again, saves about $47 billion a year. >> romney also emphasized he's running a campaign for all americans. that's a reference to the secret videotape where he claimed 47% of americans who don't pay

federal taxes consider themselves victims. president obama released new ads against those remarks and described how he sees those people during a stop in virginia beach 0. >> i see hardworking virginians. i see students trying to work their way through college. >> polls have the president leading in virginia now by up to a 7% margin. thanks to a donation, nationalses fans will not be stranded in southwest d.c. during the team's playoff run. metro has annnced it will extend the hours that the trains run for all the postseason home games. and a d.c.-based company cald living social will pay for it. metro requires a $29,000 deposit to keep the stations open past midnight. nationalses refused to pay the bill even though other sports teams in town do pay it. there's controversy tonight over the kennedy center honors. that program recognizes artists for excellence in their field.

but some people feel certain minority groups are being ignored. in fact, only a handful of them have been recognized over the award certiemonyceremony's 35-y history. erica gonzalez reports. >> reporter: in 35 years, the kennedy center honors have been bestowed to 185 recipients, including this year's honorees. buddy guy, dustin hoffman, david letterman, na tal ya mack rove va and members of led zeppelin. >> carlos santana, joan baez. there is a wealth of individuals who could be honored now. >> reporter: but felix sanchez, chairman of the national hispanic federation of the arts says hispanics are being overlooked. two latinos have received the honor so sanchez called the kennedy president michael kaiser. >> he used profanity and hung up the phone, hoping that i guess the problem would go away. >> reporter: kaiser would not agree to an on-camera interview

but directed us to his comments at the "washington post" where he, quote quote, regretted using the strong language. >> apologize to what they did to felix sanchez. second, we need structural changes that secure the inclusion of latinos. >> reporter: we found it wasn't just latinos that were underrepresented as honorees but a number of minority groups. more than 76% of honorees are caucasian, 20% african-american. nearly 2% are other, slightly more than 1% are latinos and asian-americans and native americans together make up just 1%. this year's award show is set to air in late december. at the kennedy center, erica gonzalez, news4. after discovering a lost masterpiece, a virnl virg woman may have hand it over to police. officials have canceled the auction for the newly discovered ren wau painting. police believe it was stolen decades ago from the baltimore

museum of art. the fbi is investigating why it was never reported as stolen. a virginia woman says she bought the painting for 7 bucks at a flea market two years ago. it's estimated to be worth between $75,000 and $100,000. demonstrators were hauled offer in handcuffs today after a protest outside fannie mae headquarters. they were arrested for blocking traffic in northwest d.c. this afternoon. protesters held banners and called for an end to evikszs vi vikss. executives from fannie mae met with dmron straighters. they are focused on helping homeowners. still ahead on news4, a sky-high showdown as passengers tie down a passenger. a puppy stolen from a maryland rescue group could be in danger if he's not returned soon. see the video that's gotten more than 500,000 hit

first on news4, tough talk at a d.c. firehouse after someone defaced a picture of the fire chief. someone drew a mustache on a photograph of chief kenneth eller by and flipped his picture upside down. happened at engine company 10 on florida avenue in northeast. officers notified police about the vandalism and laid down the law to the entire station. here's an audio recording from the confrontation.

>> the reason i ask who has -- is because there will be some charges at this point that -- at that point -- >> the fire chief says as far as he's concerned the case is closed. he'd rather the fire department focus on serious issues. james berry lives in culpeper and he's now facing felony charges after the cops say they found more than 100 marijuana plants in his basement. police say his place was rigged to hide the plants. it there was either a trap door leading from the main house to the basement. these drugs have an estimated street value of $300,000. a virginia man is facing federal charges tonight after a tirade on board a united airlines flight. cell phone video shows the mab man screaming on a flight from chicago to california, 26-year-old arash daroni, a model and actor. passengers say he also harassed women and made threats in

addition to the rant. when the situation escalated, passengers used their belts to hold him down until the plane landed. in connecticut, there's video that appears to show a bus driver sending text messages and checking her facebook posts behind the wheel. parents in farming ton say their kids shot the cell phone video. they were nervous that the driver wasn't paying attention. parents released the video on tuesday. the school bus company says that woman doesn't work for them anymore. police are looking into it. a maryland animal shelter needs your help in finding a stolen puppy. officials say a couple came in tuesday and played with 7-week-old mango. 40 minutes later, the couple was gone and so was the little gone. mango is a miniature bin cher dotsau dachshund. he hasn't been weaned or had his shots. the group is offering a $100,000 reward for his safe return.

a prank going viral, this one poking fun at the iphone fanatics. >> you know what these are. >> how long you been waiting? 2:00 in the afternoon? for real? >> oh, my [ bleep ]! >> the guys dressed up like an apple employee, pretended to drop several boxes with iphone 5s. he did it in front of people who had been standing in line for days waiting to get their coveted phones. as you can imagine, created quite a stir. some people shocked. some of them were angry. but nobody stepped out of line to help the dude. video has been viewed more than 700,000 times on youtube. oh, lord, there goes my phones. >> that's not my phone. >> good prank. >> pretty good. >> i just love he did it multiple times. >> and people just went crazy each time. so more stormy overnight? >> yeah. and the big thing here, the good news is things ra starting to calm down a little bit. but we saw a lot of lightning

out there tonight, a ton of lightning. a lot of heavy rai some areas coming up with 3, 4, even 5 inches of rain out there right now, guess what, we're still seeing the rain. it's going to be a very messy night tonight. so if you're driving around, just give yourself a lot of extra time. we do have those leave s startig to fall from the trees, could produce slick roadways. i want to show you a fantastic photo. look at this, down toward the plains heading back forward falk your county. edward payne took this earlier this evening. what an amazing shot. he has other great shots on his web site of storms all around our region. i know i'll continue to watch for those. lightning for us? starting to wind down just a little bit. the strongest storm was actually this one right here that really weakened just before it got to the district, but it did provide us with a lot of raifl. we'll continue to see the rain throughout the rest of the evening hours. right now, where's the rain? the heaviest down toward cull perfect pepper county and still a flash flood warning until

1:00 a.m. i also want to show you this. severe thunderstorm watch only for southern maror mare and down along the northern neck includen stafford county and fredericksburg, that's where the severe thunderstorm watch is. nobody else under a watch or a warning at this time, and we just have that heavy rain, like i said, in and around the district, including right along the beltway, over toward walker mill, the buoy area, ber win and bethesda and the rockville region. still seeing light to moderate and even pockets of heavier rain. then we get into some fairly heavy rain, down toward southern loudoun county, right along 15, 15 and route 50. if you're in that area, expect very heavy rain. also over toward the gaithersburg region and down to the south, warrenton really been hit hard with very heavy rain during the day today and right down toward culpeper where we're seeing the lightning. i want to show you how much rain we've seen, most of it has been in through northern virginia but a pocket of about an inch in towards portions of montgomery county, the district only about a quarter of inch.

but 2.1 inches in leesburg, 3.7 in northern falkeer county. the flash flood warning, over 5 ifrmzs of rain doppler indicated. so heavy rainfall to the south and west and we're not quite done. we have this line still coming through over the next couple of hours. it will take its time doing this, all because of a stronger storm in towards portion of pennsylvania. so we're not done with the rain just yet. by the time you wake up tomorrow morning, we could still be dealing with showers out there and we will all be dealing with very wet roadways. once again, give yourself some extra time. high temperature today, 85 degrees after a low of 67. temperatures 10 degrees above average. that helped to provide the instability for these storms. the sun went down tonight at 6:56. now, your temperatures into the 60s where we have seen the rain, 64 in leesburg, 64 in winchester and culpeper, fredericksburg at 72, pax river at 72 degrees. what are we going to be seeing? we have that area of low pressure passing off to the north providing those stormy conditions. tomorrow it will bring a front

through. i think we will see at least a few showers along that front but not a washout tomorrow. i don't expect to see too much of it during the day tomorrow. and i don't expect much rain at all on sta. right now i'm calling for a pretty nice saturday. sunday however, little bit of a different story. talk about that in a second. mostly cloudy tomorrow morning, warm with a shower possible, 58 to 67 degrees when you wake up tomorrow morning. when you step out the door, watch out for at least a little bit in the way of wet roadways, sun and clouds tomorrow afternoon, continued warmth with possible showers, temperatures 79 to 83 degrees. any showers that develop once again could produce some rather strong thunderstorms, too. then we move in towards the lower 70s. saturday 73, i think dry right now, 73 on sunday with a 30% chance of showers. but it's sunday that will be a lot of clouds. then we see sunshine back on monday, another storm which could bring us some pretty good rain coming up on tuesday. so we've been talking about that unsettled pattern. it doesn't look like until the middle of next tweak week before we finally break out of it. but we needed some of the rain

so not bad. >> not the lightning, though. >> not the lightning, though it was cool. >> thank you, doug. sports up next. big night for michael morrison and the nats. and here's something we can all relate to. an english master shows just how hard it is to wake up in the morning.

>> announcer: this is the xfinity sports desk brought to you by xfinity, your home for the most live sports. so last i heard the number was four. has anything changed? >> the number is now three.

>> oh, we like it. >> three. we're going the right direction, a total team effort by the nationalses tonight. it wasn't his best outing but gio gonzalez got more than enough help from the nats' bats to be become the first lefty to win 21 games in the league since the d-train. taking care of business up in philadelphia, bryce harper, loves playing in front of the bluebirds up in philly. he homered last night in his first at-bat, tonight again. harper's 21st of the season, now three shy of tying the home run record for a teenager. nats 1-0 lead. bottom one, gonzalez in trouble here. bases loaded. darin roth drives this one to deep center field, and that's going to be a bases clearing dublg. the phillies take a 3-1 lead. gio lasted six innings and struck out six but allowed three rins. luckily his offense bailed him out. top of the sixth, the nationals

have a 4-3 lead. michael morse, beast mode, just pummels this pitch. he also admires it for maybe a little bit too long there in philadelphia. that is a monster blast. two home runs and four rbis for morse. nats win 7-3. gio gonzalez his 21st win. nats magic number now at three after what went on down in atlanta. braves taking on the marlins. ozzie guillen, he wears his emotions right on his mug. simmons lines one into the gap, uggla comes in to scorer from second and the braves tied up the game. couple of batters later, bases loaded for uggla. man, is he dangerous. brian peterson? uh-oh! a routine catch turns into two runs for the braves. they go up 4-2, add a couple more and sweep the marlins 6-2.

so the braves still in the hunt technically for the division title until the nats win three more. they have six more in the regular season. watching the ravens game tonight, you could tell the regular officials were back. why, you ask? because you barely noticed they were there. that's the way it's supposed to be. nfl commissioner roger goodell and the players breathing a huge sigh of relief now that the officials union and the league have agreed on a new eight-year deal. >> labor negotiations and labor management disputes are difficult periods. what's most difficult about it is you have the two parties but you have a lot of parties outside the room that get impacted by it. starting with our fans. and we're sorry to have to bring our fans -- >> the guys have a job and under the circumstances they were under, you can't just sit there and blame those guys. but i am glad that the situation is now under control and ready to play some nfl football. >> i think the communication

will be a little better. >> all jim has let with a funny. trent williams missed practice today, still up if the air for sunday's game against the buccanee buccaneers. pierre ga san was limited. s ravens up 23-16 with about 1:30 to go. >> they better stop messing around with the browns. >> dude, you can't